I have a diffuse wood texture, along with specularity map, and a displacement map, also a normal map which I don't know how to use. I could wire up a Tex Coords node to an image node, load the normal map into it, connect it to the normal map node but then I don't know where to connect that to.

The three image texture nodes from top to bottom are diffuse, specularity, then displacement. Did I wire them up correctly?

That's one possible way to do a specular map. From the object and the node setup though, I'm guessing its purpose is to dirty up the reflection on the wood? In that case, you want to attach it to the "color" on the glossy node, and attach a fresnel node to the mix amount input. The way you have it set up now would be for something like scratched or rusty metal.

Normal map attaches to the "normal" input on your material nodes (in this case, both of them). Add an image node for your normal map, set its type to "non-color data" and plug its color output into the color input of the normal map node.

Your multiply node on the displacement wire is currently doing nothing. You could use it to scale the displacement height, except at 1.0 it's not doing that. Use it or get it out of the chain so you don't have an unneeded multiply operation in your material. Also, Cycles displacement is a bit rudimentary right now, and is basically a bump map. If you are happy with your current result, you can leave it, but you want to use the displace modifier if you want to actually move faces around.

Originally Posted by jtheninja:That's one possible way to do a specular map. From the object and the node setup though, I'm guessing its purpose is to dirty up the reflection on the wood? In that case, you want to attach it to the "color" on the glossy node, and attach a fresnel node to the mix amount input. The way you have it set up now would be for something like scratched or rusty metal.

Normal map attaches to the "normal" input on your material nodes (in this case, both of them). Add an image node for your normal map, set its type to "non-color data" and plug its color output into the color input of the normal map node.

Your multiply node on the displacement wire is currently doing nothing. You could use it to scale the displacement height, except at 1.0 it's not doing that. Use it or get it out of the chain so you don't have an unneeded multiply operation in your material. Also, Cycles displacement is a bit rudimentary right now, and is basically a bump map. If you are happy with your current result, you can leave it, but you want to use the displace modifier if you want to actually move faces around.

Hey ninja thanks for your advice, and sorry for taking so long to reply.

I've been working through what you said and decided to test it all out in a new simple scene. My nodes are set up exactly as they are in the first screenshot except I remove the normal map. It's giving me a weird result, take a look.

Basically I'm just messing around trying to understand how specularity maps work.

Originally Posted by Astralogic:Hey ninja thanks for your advice, and sorry for taking so long to reply.

I've been working through what you said and decided to test it all out in a new simple scene. My nodes are set up exactly as they are in the first screenshot except I remove the normal map. It's giving me a weird result, take a look.

Basically I'm just messing around trying to understand how specularity maps work.

I mean I know I'm failing miserably at making the texture look real but that is how you set it up right? From what I understand I could have also put a fresnel node between the glossy node and the mix node correct? what would that allow me to do?

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